I have mentioned this before, but nobody seems to want to cover it and MacWorld left it out. If Fred didn’t reveal the “Jobs did it” information during the SEC investigation he would be in a world of hurt for witholding evidence. The net effect is the SEC would nail him to the wall and not be settling with ol’ Fred right now.

Therefore, we can view ol’ Fred’s statment in two lights :

1. There is nothing new under the sun. The SEC has already got this information from Fred long ago, and found nothing to prove it ever happened. Net effect : The Steve is in the clear.

2. Fred has a burning desire to go to jail and wants to room with a cell-mate named Bubba. The SEC takes a very dim view of withholding evidence, and note their statement about how happy they were with Apple’s cooperation. If Fred withheld, he is going to find himself on the receiving end of something nasty from his cell-mate, one Bubba “Ben” Dover. Net effect : The Steve is in the clear.

In either instance, Jobs has nothing to worry about. Nothing Fred has to say changes that fact. Clearly, Fred is lying and that is why we see Apple stock rocketing up instead of being in free-fall.

“It doesn’t look good for Steve, no matter how you look at it. There’s a reasonable chance that he will get charged. The evidence looks pretty damning,” said Rob Enderle, founder and principal analyst at San Jose-based Enderle Group …

I notice that the quote from Enderle doesn’t specifically mention a date or the recent SEC investigation etc. When was the quote taken (not reported, but made), and what damning evidence is he referring to?

It’s one thing to say the case looks bad for Apple, but entirely another to say that “evidence” looks bad. Knowing the source, I doubt if Enderle ever saw any evidence on this case and is talking out of his ass on the MS dole.

But to even a casual observer his statement looks unfounded and biased, even if you don’t know who he is.